SUS Board of Governors rejects Dr. Santa Ono as president of the University of Florida
BY JENNIFER CABRERA
ORLANDO, Fla. – The Florida State University System Board of Governors has rejected Dr. Santa Ono as UF’s president in a 6-10 vote.
Ono was the sole finalist put forward by UF’s presidential search committee, and UF’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously on May 27 to hire Ono, leaving only one step: confirmation by the State University System Board of Governors.
However, at the end of a meeting that lasted nearly four hours and featured detailed questioning about Ono’s record and previous statements, the Board of Governors voted 6-10 against a motion to confirm Ono.
Questions about past support for DEI initiatives
Governor Alan Levine raised questions about Ono’s past enthusiastic support for DEI initiatives and his response to a 30-day pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Michigan. Throughout the interview, Ono repeatedly said his beliefs have evolved over the past 18 months, he is an immunologist, he is not an expert in DEI, and he didn’t create programs such as DEI 2.0 at the University of Michigan.
Ono said he would commit to conducting a full audit of UF programs to find any DEI-related courses or programs “to ensure that there’s nothing that’s hidden,… and those sorts of programs will not have a place at the University of Florida.”
Regarding allowing pro-Palestinian encampments on campus, Ono said, “I actually agree that I should have been more forceful” and added that he was “trying to not have that escalate.” He added, “At UF, I would be consistently focusing on making sure that antisemitism does not rear its head again.”
DEI as “core values”
Governor Paul Renner provided Ono with a stack of documents and referred to them throughout his questions about specific statements and events. Renner asked Ono to read a quote that was attributed to him in the University of Michigan’s DEI 2.0 Year One Progress Report; the quote ended with, “Inclusion and equity, respect, diversity and integrity – these are core values of our university. They must be at the heart of everything we do. We must not back down in the face of renewed adversity.” When Renner asked Ono to explain what the “renewed adversity” was, Ono said, “I don’t recall… I don’t remember what I was saying at that time.”
Chair Brian Lamb said it wasn’t “customary” for a candidate to “have to figure out documents that have been put in front of him… We should have gotten them to him in advance, in fairness.” Other Governors argued with that, saying their job was to determine what Ono believed and why he believed those things.
After the discussion about documents, Renner asked if DEI was part of the University of Michigan’s core values in October of 2024, and Ono responded, “I think so, yeah, I think that hadn’t been changed because we changed it in March of ’25.”
Signing and removing a signature from a letter about “unprecedented government overreach”
Renner asked Ono about an April 2025 letter from the American Association of Colleges and Universities referencing “unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education,” Ono said he initially did not sign the letter, then “for a brief time, I signed it, but I have removed my name.” When asked whether anyone at UF had asked him to remove his signature after he was announced as the sole finalist at UF, Ono responded, “I don’t think so. No, it was a personal decision.”
On the science Ono relied on when changing his views on DEI: “I’m not an expert in that area.”
When Governor Jose Oliva asked what science Ono had relied on in changing his views on DEI, Ono responded, “I’m not an expert in that area. I certainly wasn’t the architect of any of these programs. They were created by other sorts of people, across institutions across North America. And so I was waiting to see, since they were new, what the impact would be.”
Oliva responded that Ono’s words at the time didn’t show that he was waiting to see what would happen, including a statement when he left the University of British Columbia that he was most proud of their Task Force on Anti-racism and Inclusive Excellence, “and that Task Force concluded whiteness is an obstacle to achieving inclusive excellence.” Ono responded that he did “not stand by that; I do not support that today, and I haven’t for about 18 months now.”
When asked about his views on gender, Ono responded, “There are two sexes, male and female… There’s a different quesion about sexuality, but there are two genders.”
On whether the climate crisis is the existential challenge of our time: “I think that what I said at that time didn’t benefit from the data that we have.”
When asked whether he still believes the climate crisis is the existential challenge of our time, Ono replied, “I do not believe that.” When asked why he had changed his mind, he said, “I think that there’s a lot of innovations in science, things like carbon capture… There are lots of solutions, and I think that what I said at that time didn’t benefit from the data that we have.”
On what Ono meant by anti-racism: “I’m an immunologist, so that’s not my specific area.”
When Governor Carson Good asked what Ono meant by anti-racism, Ono responded, “I’m an immunologist, so that’s not my specific area.” When asked why whiteness was described as a problem when Ono was at the University of British Columbia, Ono said, “I don’t really know why they think it’s so bad… I’m a medical scientist. I work with test tubes and pipettes… I spent a lot of time raising money and choosing good people. So, to be frank, I’m not an expert in that area.”
When asked why he had enthusiastically endorsed the Task Force on Anti-racism and Inclusive Excellence, Ono said, “I’m not enthusiastic about that… I really am not an expert in that area… It’s not something that I personally believe,” and Good said, “It looks enthusiastic [in the video], by the way.”
On racism being America’s original sin: “I regret the use of those words at that time.”
Good asked about Ono’s previous statement that racism was America’s original sin, and Ono said, “I regret the use of those words at that time… I should have been much more careful about my use of words… I think the original intentions were good, and I have seen the negative consequences, and I have been inspired by what’s happened in Florida.”
On whether he supports COVID vaccine mandates for university students: “In hindsight, it’s really hard to say. I don’t have enough experience in looking at the clinical data. I think it’s quite varied.”
When asked whether he thought it was right to mandate COVID vaccines for university students, “based on what you know now,” Ono responded, “In hindsight, it’s really hard to say. I don’t have enough experience in looking at the clinical data. I think it’s quite varied.”
Regarding DeSantis’s decisions to reopen the universities in the fall of 2020, Ono said the students were remote at Michigan for most of a year, and “there was a lot of dissatisfaction. And so now, especially with vaccines being available or other approaches with PPE, I think the decision made here was the correct one.”
After the board had finished questioning Ono, UF Board of Trustees Chair Mori Hosseini asked the board to give Ono a chance.
Motion
A motion was made to ratify Dr. Ono to become the next president of the University of Florida, and the motion was seconded. Chair Lamb asked three times if anyone had anything to add to the discussion, and then the board voted 6-10 against the motion.
No votes
- Ashley Bell Barnett
- Timothy Cerio
- Manny Diaz, Jr.
- Aubrey Edge
- Patricia Frost
- Carson Good
- Ken Jones
- Alan Levine
- Jose Oliva
- Paul Renner
Yes votes
- Carson Dale
- Kimberly Dunn
- Edward Haddock
- Brian Lamb
- Charles Lydecker
- Eric Silagy
On all other questions: “I’m an immunologist, so that’s not my specific area.”
On the one specific question about immunology (COVID): “In hindsight, it’s really hard to say. I don’t have enough experience in looking at the clinical data. I think it’s quite varied.”
If his field is immunology yet he didn’t look at the data regarding something affecting millions of people then I’m glad they sent him back to play with his test tubes and pipettes.
Oh he was bulls….ing, and the board was serious. The board is well paid by us to pretend they don’t know that public health beats snowflake freedom in a dangerous pandemic.
Well, maybe they are that stupid.
Are you that ignorant? They even admitted natural immunity was superior. And won’t admit the fatality rate and “long Covid” side effects from the jabs. Despite the REAL science. 👺👿👹💩
“Overall mortality rates among unvaccinated persons were 14.1 times the rates among bivalent vaccine recipients; mortality rates among monovalent-only vaccine recipients were 2.6 times the rates among bivalent vaccine recipients during the late BA.4/BA.5 period.”
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7206a3.htm#:~:text=Overall%20mortality%20rates%20among%20unvaccinated,5%20period.
Yep, the U.F. dodged a bullet.
At the end of the day, a leopard cannot change its spots.
Enough said.
True. Once a clown show of ignorant buffons who hired and fired Sasse with a $1 million dollars a year severance check (you don’t give severance pay to someone who quits), always a clown show of buffoons now celebrating their ignorance of racism, history, pandemics, and climate change, as if UF’s next president probably lives in Live Oak.
What do those irrelevant special interests have to do with running a university? 👺👹
Your overlords in Tallahassee asked those questions Yoyo.
fyi
https://www.alligator.org/article/2025/04/uf-s-next-president-could-make-up-to-3-million-a-year
Why the BOT picked this guy is beyond me.
Did they not do their research??
That’s two horrendous picks in the last 2 years.
Of course they didn’t do their research and never have. These are political hacks with their finger in the wind and are not even embarrassed to show their ignorance to the world. No doubt presidential candidates will now line up for applications to become UF president and the same goes for the best faculty thinking of moving from her or too here.
Great. We can replace them with conservatives.
Marvin translated – the next UF president will be a Republican politician. No one else of stature will be willing to ruin their reputation by coming here.
Bravissimi to the board! Ono was squirming like a worm to escape his past record. It’s gonna be fun to see what happens next. The UF faculty are probably all rushing for their crayons and playdough to release their anger and fear.
Yeah, scaring the UF faculty will pay rich dividends since they are so bad they can’t go elsewhere.
Wait a minute!
Oh no!!! We wouldn’t want the marxist indoctrination crew to leave … Oh wait.
Dips.. Do you think UF’s previous high national rankings were because of the pretty brick buildings?
What’s the purpose of the BOT wasting so much time, for any of Florida universities? The BOG should manage the hiring process. The only way to not be like some liberal Harvard. UF needs to go the way of trade schools, focusing only on degrees that get the students paid upon graduation. Less research the better.
Research drives innovation and new discoveries, new technologies.
Even a caveman knows that.
Ned with all due respect, you have no idea what you are talking about. Research is what has made UF into a Top 5 university. The AI lab is the top one in the nation that is not commercially owned. The amount of money pouring into this university just for biotech research alone could choke a heard of horses. I understand where you are coming from, but you are very wrong and may want to do some “research”. (Pun intended)
That’s true, but the results are just about making money, not helping humanity.
I’m very aware of what I’m talking about. Florida BOG focus is not on research. We reject research, and instead push for “purity” test. Let’s go the trade school route, to avoid dealing with those that understand that diverse opinions and viewpoints makes things better when it comes to forward thinking.
No you are not aware of what you’re talking about Ned, I was trying to be nice about it but apparently you don’t want to listen.
@Realjk,
The money goes into research, which helps real people. I saw a Dr. from College of Oncology show how they were researching how to use a person’s RNA to create destroy brain cancer cells, I have seen another presentation where research with AI was making it easier to find pneumonia on x-rays, meaning they can catch it earlier and save lives.
What do you think helps students learn better. Learning about theory, or actually working on the research that confirms the theory?
Who DIDN’T see this coming?
The real focus should be on Hosseini and Patel for endorsing and then doubling down on Ono.
The real focus should be on Hosseini for allowing political interests to take over UF and it isn’t about conservatives vs liberals. It’s about powerful political interests (ie rich people) getting their hands on the money that flows through UF.
Hosseini handed UF over to DeS, brought Sasse on board to get millions donated to DeS’s failed presidential campaign from the father of Ricketts who wanted (and got) Sasse’s vacated senate seat.
Now UF, a once venerable institution, is the laughingstock of academia and no qualified candidate will want to lead it.
We’ll end up with Pedo Gaetz and the end of UF’s legacy of excellence.
Pleasantly surprised. He’s a far left liberal wokie. Of which there’s already way too much of in local “leadership.” (Ex: Alachua & Gainesville city commissioners are about all far-left liberal wokies).
And clearly this guy contradicts himself & just goes with the popular trends, instead of standing his ground, being real and facing adversity when he has to- Like a true leader does.
Plus he was complicit in the Michigan football scandal.
So I guess I was right. It’s like the Dems claiming the Klan is really Republican since the parties magically “flipped,” which never happened. It is what it is.
The board pulled Ono’s pants down in front of everyone. Make no mistake, this was a deposition on record in front of the world. Fuchs has to now put that big retirement on hold. This is the woke applicant UF gets AFTER raising the salary to nearly 3 million dollars. Imaging if they left it at 1 million, would they get only Walmart greeters?
JustSay, this may come as a surprise to you, but “the world” isn’t against racism, denies global climate change, against vaccines, and for politicians deciding curriculum and academic standards.
Fuchs had returned to being a regular professor. He’s not looking to “retire.” He just enjoys teaching more.
I say let Fuchs permanently retire and let’s bring in Corcoran for a year or two as interim. He can get a head start in thinning out the liberal smell.
They couldn’t afford his expense account for sushi anyway……Sasse blew that budget with his 35K sushi party.
So, the Board of Knuckle Draggers rejected Ono for being against racism, diversity and equity in hiring, for knowing that America started out as racist with slaves, for acknowledging the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is occurring rapidly and is potentially dangerous, and for accepting that mandating vaccinations in the event of another dangerous epidemic for those who come on campus may be an essential tool to guard public and Gator health.
Much as Ono tried to pretend that he was an idiot too, these are straight up the reasons why the Board wasted everyone’s time, Ono’s professional career, and most importantly the reputation of UF and our state. How many applicants will they get next time that aren’t working at Oral Roberts U and Liberty U? How many of the nation’s best faculty and best students will look at this and decide to not come down to the swamp, and I don’t mean Florida Field.
These are the same goons who hired Sasse, then fired him while pretending he wanted to spend more time with his family. Uh, you don’t give people who quit $1 million a year, you do that with those you fired and who you want to shut up.
The state GOP is trashing the well earned respect and reputation UF, New College, and our entire state university system previously earned. It’s always a shorter trip down then up.
You and your troupe of geriatric out-of-your-mind TDS sign-shakers are the biggest blight on Gainesville. Imagine parents visiting with prospective students and seeing what looks like a giant psychiatric nursing home standing by the side of the road in faded old clothes, wildly shaking kindergarten-caliber signs and insanely grinning. Move to the mountains of Asheville already. We need young people and businesses here, not the same tired old senile fossils who somehow think they matter. You don’t.
Peabody, I’ll consider your well reasoned position and get back to you.
Jazzy Eastman. There you go again regurgitating the favorite liberal talking points. DEI/Affirmative Action are textbook definitions of racism. To say that one race needs ‘extra help’ because they don’t meet the same standards as other applicants is blatantly saying that that race is substandard. That is racism! The world isn’t stating that the climate isn’t changing. The world is stating that climate change is NOT solely caused by anthropogenic activities. The whole ‘carbon offset’ scam is just that. A scam. Wind turbines are a HUGE detriment to the environment. Batteries for electric cars use heavy metals and are NOT good for the environment. And the whole idea of bankrupting OUR country with excessive regulations while ignoring India, China, and Russia pollution is insane. And for vaccines, MOST people aren’t against vaccines. They’re against UNTESTED vaccines created by companies that are shielded from any litigation through 2029. Get some new material from an unbiased source for a change.
New material:
DEI is not AA. It is the purposeful consideration of a wider pool of applicants for jobs and is based on our undeniable history of racism and sexism which persists in hiring – women have benefitted most from DEI.
Climate change – “The evidence for global warming due to human influence has been recognized by the national science academies of all the major industrialized countries.[9] In the scientific literature, there is a very strong consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases.[10] No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view…
Nearly all actively publishing climate scientists say humans are causing climate change.[4][5] Surveys of the scientific literature are another way to measure scientific consensus. A 2019 review of scientific papers found the consensus on the cause of climate change to be at 100%,[6] and a 2021 study concluded that over 99% of scientific papers agree on the human cause of climate change.[7] The small percentage of papers that disagreed with the consensus often contained errors or could not be replicated.[8]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change
“China’s per capita emissions are greater than the world and European Union averages but less than Australia, Canada, and the U.S…..It has also been noted that higher-income countries have outsourced emissions-intensive industries to China.[8][9] …..According to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report the country that will pay the highest financial cost if the temperature continue to rise is China. The impacts will include food insecurity, water scarcity, flooding, especially in coastal areas where most of the population lives due to higher than average sea level rise, and more powerful cyclones. At some point part of the country can face wet-bulb temperatures higher than humans and other mammals can tolerate more than six hours.[38]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_China
Unlike the MAGA fools now running our country, the Chinese are smart enough to both claim the future green economy leadership and to recognize they have to plan to avoid future disasters.
“China is the world’s top electricity producer from renewable energy sources. China’s renewable energy capacity is growing faster than its fossil fuels and nuclear power capacity.[53] China Installed over 373 GW of renewables in 2024, reaching a total installed renewable capacity of 1,878 GW by the end of the year.[54]
The country aims to have 80% of its total energy mix come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2060, and achieve a combined 1,200 GW of solar and wind capacity by 2030.[53]..”
While it is important to test any medical procedure and Covid vaccines were tested, you can’t wait 5 years when am international pandemic is killing your citizens and putting others in the ICUs. As a matter of fact Covid vaccines by all tests show much higher risk by non-use than use, which was exceedingly rare. That’s a fact.
“Vaccines are the most important public health measure to protect people from COVID-19, because SARS-CoV-2 is highly contagious.2,3 Vaccine trials involve several stages, including preclinical testing on animals to assess safety and effectiveness, followed by clinical trials involving human participants.4 These trials are conducted in multiple phases, starting with a small group of volunteers and gradually increasing the number of participants to gather more data on safety and efficacy. Rare adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines include anaphylaxis, blood clots, myocarditis, pericarditis, hearing changes, and tinnitus.5 The overall risk of anaphylaxis is quite low, and these reactions occur in a small percentage of people after vaccination. To ensure vaccine recipients’ health and safety, medical personnel carefully track and treat any adverse reactions.6…”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10507236/
Can you point to a one-party Dem ruled area — city, state, college — that hasn’t degenerated and been abandoned lately? Why would UF follow what Calif., Gainesville CC, or Columbia Univ. have done to themselves?
Who exactly do you guys want to run a LIBERAL university?! UF will never be a conservative Christian college (unfortunately.) Ono would have been a good peace offering- he was a former president of a huge university who has gone on record and backtracked and said he has ‘seen the light’ on issues like DEI. That’s about as good as you are going to get for a college that will always have a liberal leaning. In fact in a lot of way he was like JD Vance, who also claimed to have changed his views on Trump amd MAGA, and he was given a pass. It’s clear that a conservative like Sasse will not work at UF, and Ono was going to be a good middle option. Now who in the world is going to want to come to UF after this debacle??
Yes, he backtracked, on every issue he was confronted with. He’s a lying, self serving phony.
University of Floridians! 💪🏻
UF and that State of Florida continue to embarrass themselves through all things higher education.
Yesterday’s meeting was a disgrace. A bunch of politicos scoring cheap base points.
This BOG is more loyal to the GOP than higher education.
I will not give another dime to UF until it changes it’s ways.
Albert, who could know that having politicians running universities would be a problem??
They should just hire Christopher Rufo. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
They already have at New College, and since then it has dropped from it’s previous high academic rating.
Six voted for! Says all one need know about those six. Time to remove them and the Trustees who approved this DEI and Vaccine pusher!
Go shill for liberal garbage you know nothing about somewhere else “doctor”
Meeting video:
https://thefloridachannel.org/videos/6-3-25-florida-board-of-governors-meeting/
This meeting was ridiculous and these idiot big shots ignored the fact that Ono was totally qualified if not over qualified for the job – and few in the country have run a similarly sized quality university – but waste all this time on non-issues like DEI and anti-semitism, as if either was a problem, let alone big one at UF, or that he was an anti-semite or racist.
They’ve screwed Florida as far as getting other quality applicants – we can forget that – and we almost certainly will have some hack GOP politician as the next president, just like all the other state universities with new hires.